Just saw a document on Pacific warfare in WW2 and to my surprise it was mentioned that the US side did not believe the Japanese could fly the planes well because they had the weird looking eyes, which would probably deny them the 3-D vision. Anyone heard of this whether it´s true?
Sounds like another facet of the somewhat overconfident racism that affected many initial views of the Japanese both as human beings and fighters. The contemporary perception of them as overagressive primitive 'monkey men' who could dominate other primitive people but would have no chance against the sophisticated white man was widespread. A friend of my grandfathers received lectures on how they could barely fire their rifles, let alone operate complex machinery. It's always a mistake to underestimate your enemy and this seems to have initially been the case with the Japanese. The chap I mentioned above was stationed in Singapore at the time, so the underestimation gave way to overestimation, and then disaster. Cheers, Adam.
This is just one of the milder articles that circulated during the time - I've seen snippets of articles and even official reports (esp American) that basically say the same thing - right up to Pearl Harbor. http://rwebs.net/avhistory/history/japan.htm
Thanx for the article Amrit, that was quite a "brainwash"... And I don´t think the British would have liked that either: "....and the British are far inferior to the American."
